Death Note

Despite tentative hopes, the Netflix live action movie for Death Note was painful to watch. Watching with my husband and another friend who was a fan of the original anime, we switched it off after 10 minutes soon after Light's girly screaming. I did manage to play the rest on my own while multi-tasking since I felt I owed it that much. The shinigami Ryuk was the one cool thing, even if they changed his amused observer role the acting and effects for him were great. Everything else though? Instead of a top role model perfect student equally liked by fellow students and adults, Light became a whiney emo brat with so many issues. Mia, who filled in for Misa's role, instead of sweet ditzy but still somewhat smart (and definitely loyal to a fault in her love) just became a *itch. Now I always rooted for L, but these two are our protagonists of the story and unlike the original source, I could find nothing likable or admirable about them. The gore-fest was also distracting. Death Note is a very toned down thriller with most deaths happening naturally with heart attacks, implied suicides, hit by a car and so on but expect Final Destination shock-factor and gory deaths in this adaption.